LiveMove, the transportation student group at the University of Oregon co-sponsored Bicycle Appreciation Days in Eugene in late February. The weather was lousy but, as this video from the Daily Emerald shows, the students are doing a great job! OTREC is pleased to sponsor student groups on each of its four campuses.
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The Initiative for Bicycle & Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) has published it’s Winter Newsletter. This issues includes updates on IBPI’s activities including the 2009 safe routes to school conference, upcoming workshops and the Trails Capstone Course as well as findings from the Portland Safe Routes to School Evaluation and results from the National Survey of Bicycle and Pedestrian Curriculum Report. For more information please visit IBPI’s website.
OTREC is pleased to announce the hiring of Jon Makler, AICP as the new Education and Technology Transfer Program Manager. Jon’s role will involve disseminating OTREC research to professionals throughout Oregon and beyond. Jon is well known in the Portland region for his work on transportation operations with the City of Portland and Metro. Before moving to Oregon from Massachusetts in 2005, Jon worked as a transportation consultant with a diverse portfolio, including metropolitan planning, intelligent transportation systems, and environmental justice. Prior to that, Jon was affiliated with the Region 1 University Transportation Center, first as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.S., 2000), and later as a research project manager at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Jon’s research focused on the integration of transportation and environmental policies and was based on case studies of Mexico City as well as major US cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco. Jon earned his B.A. from Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was born and raised. Jon’s family lives in Northeast Portland.
OTREC is pleased to announce that it has hired John MacArthur as the Sustainable Transportation Program Manager. John’s role will be to develop, direct and manage the strategic direction for OTREC's climate and sustainable transportation initiatives. He will also be active in research related to sustainable transportation, particularly in the areas of alternative vehicles, the relationship between transportation and public health, performance measurement, material evaluation, and decision making. Before joining the OTREC staff, John was the Context Sensitive and Sustainable Solutions Program Manager for the OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program. John has worked for 15 years in the environmental and sustainability field. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University and his M.S. in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is excited about this new position, and looks forward to working with all of the Consortium members.
The Miller award will provide OTREC with the funding to develop a Transportation Sustainability Roadmap for Oregon. This roadmap will guide research, education and partnership initiatives, establishing the foundation for creating sustainable transportation research, education, and community engagement activities. The project will build momentum on a number of efforts currently underway including OTREC’s participation in the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC) workshop for transportation professionals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and involvement in the development of the Best Practices Manual for a ìClean, Green and Smartî West Coast transportation corridor system and other national efforts through the U.S. Department of Transportation. This project will leverage the expertise of staff and partner faculty researchers in order to develop a more focused approach to sustainable transportation.
OTREC will be co-sponsoring the National Rural Intelligent Transportation Systems conference in Seaside, OR; August 23-27, 2009. The Call for Abstracts has been issued. To submit an abstract for presentation, go to: http://www.nritsconference.org, then click on Programs. Authors can also email abstracts to info@nritsconference.org. Emails must include all of the following: Abstract title, Lead author contact information (name, organization, address, phone & fax numbers, and email), Supporting author(s) name(s) and email addresses (if any), Topic area, and Abstract text (500 word maximum).
OTREC students and faculty were active at the Transportation Research Board’s 88th Annual Meeting, held in Washington, D.C., January 11-15, 2009. For details of specific sessions where OTREC partner university students and faculty participated you can follow these links: Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Portland State University. Congratulations to all participants!
The Region X Transportation Consortium hosted a reception at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. The consortium is made up of the University Transportation Centers and Departments of Transportation in Alaska, Washington, Idaho and Oregon. The annual reception provides an opportunity for transportation professionals, educators and students to visit with colleagues from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. For the first time, the UTC Students of the Year (SOY) were introduced. Shown at left are AUTC Director Billy Connor, TransNow SOY Kari Watkins, NIATT Director of the Center for Clean Vehicle Technology Karen Den Braven, TransNow Director Nancy Nihan, NIATT SOY Nicholas Harker, OTREC Director Robert L. Bertini, and OTREC SOY Christo Brehm.
Zachary Horowitzís M.S. project report, ìFreight Railroad Capacity Alternatives in the Pacific Northwest: An Analysis of Class I Cooperation in the Columbia River Gorgeî won the Neville A. Parker Award for Outstanding Non-thesis Master’s Degree Paper in Policy and Planning from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). He is the first student from the state of Oregon to win a CUTC award. His project, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Monsere, examined the impact of freight railroad traffic volumes in the Pacific Northwest, which are rapidly increasing toward capacity. Using OpenTrack, a railroad simulation software application developed at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, he explored the potential benefits of a directional operating strategy in which the two railroad companies, BNSF Railway and Union Pacific, would combine their track and communication infrastructure. The results of the simulation model showed that the cooperative directional operating strategy has the potential to substantially increase capacity in the Columbia River corridor. Mr. Horowitz completed a M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University in 2007. While at PSU, he studied traffic capacity analysis on Oregon highway 217 and presented his original research at TRB, ITE, and TransNow conferences. He also took on a number of student leadership roles, including co-organizing the 2006 TransNow student conference and serving as...
Read moreThe Region X Consortium will soon release a request for proposal in response to one of the following research problem statements relating to: Gathering Low ADT Highway Storm Water Quality Data; or Climate Change Impact Assessment for Surface Transportation in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. OTREC is hoping to assemble a research team involving our university partners and potentially those in any of the Region X states. The total funding for the project is approximately $200,000. The RFP is expected to be released early 2009. Only universities from the four member UTCs in the Northwest are eligible to respond. If you have expertise in one of the following areas and would like to be involved or lead a research team, please contact me at hagedorn@pdx.edu.